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Health & Fitness

Choosing a Nursing Home for Your Loved One

Caring for an elderly family member or loved one can be one of the most challenging tasks, especially if you are doing it alone along while managing a career, caring for your children, and dealing with all of your additional everyday doings. The elderly face some of the most challenging and difficult diseases including overlapping diseases such as Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure and heart disease. Age related diseases such as these require constant monitoring, care and medical treatment. They also create a barrier for an elderly person to perform every day simple tasks, such as bathing and getting dressed.  The attorneys at Malman Law understand why families turn to nursing homes to care for their elderly and often fragile loved ones. If you are faced with the decision to put your loved one in a nursing home, we want to be sure that you thoroughly examine your options. Below are some suggestions when shopping for an extended long term care facility.

Every person who is looking for long term care facility should take tours, bring a paper and pen to take lots of notes, beware of cleanliness, and ask lots of questions. If you live too far from an elderly person who you are shopping for, take the time to go online and read reviews, articles and news about the nursing home.

Quality of Life

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Be sure that the nursing home has activities that are suitable for your loved ones cognitive abilities. For example, some nursing home facilities offer offsite excursions, gardening, or musicians and other events that occur onsite. These activities can help your loved one feel at home.

Standard of Care

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Be sure that your loved one has a thorough assessment by a qualified person before being admitted. Additionally, nursing homes are required to give the admitted person and their family a pamphlet that reviews the rights of the resident and the responsibilities of the staff members.

Location

Are you able to easily travel to visit your loved one? Sadly, it is often that the elderly who are abused and neglected are the ones who are isolated from friends and family. Abuse and neglect can also induce additional health problems such as depression, isolation and anxiety. Keeping up with the care that an elderly person is under will give your family a greater peace of mind that neglect and abuse is not occurring.

Ask Questions

Ask questions such as, how are your rooms organized? What is you nurse and resident ratio? Do you have activities for my loved one to participate in?  Do you have a psychologist and nutritionist on staff?  How do you a plan to prevent falls? How do you handle incontinence? Do you have a flexible nutrition menu? You even have the right to ask questions about health inspections such as, show me your last three inspection reports, and how did you fix these problems?

These are just a few questions that you can ask. Depending on the state that your loved one is in, will depend on the variety of questions that you can consider asking.

After fully examining your options, compare the different facilities and then choose the nursing home that you believe will fit your loved one best.

Choosing the best nursing home for your loved one can prevent them from facing abuse and neglect. However, even in the some of the best care facilities, abuse and neglect still does occur. If you or a loved one feel that you are suspicious of what could be a case of abuse and neglect, do not hesitate to call a nursing home abuse attorney to start an investigation. 

Learn more about signs of nursing home abuse by downloading a copy of "6 Warning Signs of Nursing Home Abuse." 

Our team of attorneys will do their best to be sure that your family is compensated for all injuries done so that your loved one receives the proper treatment and quality of life that they deserve for their future. Malman Law serves all of Illinois and is available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Call today for a free consultation and legal advice. 

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